Time is Money (Or… Money is Time)

For the most part, people receive money by spending time on a business or in their job. Thus, a certain amount of time spent translates into a certain amount of money.

In all considerations of money matters we must think about its relation to time first.

Besides doing work worth doing, or work that they enjoy, I imagine people want to do work where they are paid more. Sometimes one priority outweighs the other, but in all cases it is nice to receive more money for your time.

Forgive me for stating some things which might be obvious, but let me form the whole of this discussion…

To receive more money for your time you have to do something different then what you are already doing or any combination of things.

The first thing that comes to mind is efficiency. Unfortunately many jobs are paid on an hourly basis, not a productivity basis. But if your business or job pay is productivity based then becoming more efficient can help a lot.

Efficiency basically boils down to doing the same thing in a smaller amount of time. And improving your efficiency usually involves looking at the details of your work. Ask yourself, “What little improvements can I make that turn into big improvements over time?” If you can find a way to save just ten minutes of your day by increasing your efficiency you can earn yourself an extra week of vacation a year!

For those that want to see the math…

Most people work a 40 hour work week. And they work at least 50 weeks or 250 days out of the year. 250 days times 10 minutes a day equals 2,500 minutes or roughly 41.6 hours saved through efficiency.

You can think of it this way too. If you had an extra 40 hours what would you do with it? That extra efficiency can be worth a lot of money.

For instance, you could possibly spend that time doing something that you would otherwise hire someone to do. Or you could spend that time shopping around for better deals. Possibly saving thousands of dollars on a house or vehicle purchase!

Time is money no doubt.

There are two ways to have your time equal more money. You can decide where to spend your time. Is option A better than option B? And you can improve what you are already doing with your time. Get better at doing option A or option B.

One of the best examples of this is in earning a college degree…

Engineering majors tend to earn more then English Literature majors. Option A is better then Option B.

If you are already an engineer then you also have the option to get better at it. Through further training, a master’s degree, or just sheer experience over time…

Either way you look at it, time is money… The better you spend your time, and the more time you spend, the more money you make. I guess that is why we talk about “spending” money the same way we talk about “spending” time.

Money can buy you time as well. Unfortunately you often have to spend your time first to get the money to buy back your time later.

This is the concept behind retirement…

You are putting extra money into a retirement account now to buy time later. Specifically you are buying time where you don’t have to work and earn money in your later years. Many people are now realizing that they did not put enough into their retirements accounts to purchase the non-working time in their later years.

Specifically, it is hard to estimate how much you need in later years because inflation erodes away the value of your money. Again, time is money. It could be worth more or less in the future depending on factors such as inflation and your investment return.

A lot of personal finance blogs are centered around this one topic because there is so much to discuss and because it is so unpredictable. But that doesn’t stop people from making suggestions. 😉

Again, time is money. The more you think about how you value your time in terms of money, the better able you will be at managing your money.